INDIRECT EVIDENTIALITY AND THE EXPRESSION OF THE SPEAKER’S STANCE IN ROMANIAN
INDIRECT EVIDENTIALITY AND THE EXPRESSION OF THE SPEAKER’S STANCE IN ROMANIAN

Summary/Abstract: The study aims to emphasize how lexical particles and grammatical constructions ex- press indirect evidentiality and the speaker’s stance in Romanian. As with the other Ro- mance languages, Romanian contains the grammatical means to express the speaker’s knowledge source, such as the Conditional Mood, a prototypical quotative/reportative evidential marking, or the Subjunctive and the Future, which, together with the Presump- tive, a modal form specific to this linguistic system alone, function as markers of indirect evidentiality of the inferential type. Additionally, each of these forms can be augmented by a rich lexicalized system of adverbs and particles. For example, pesemne [‘probably’, literally on + signs], poate [‘may be’; a regressive form from the third person singular of the verb a se putea < Late Latin *potere (Classical Latin posse)], probabil [‘proba- bly’, < a borrowing from the Fr. probable and the Lat. probabilis] are lexical particles of inferential evidentiality, and cică [‘supposedly’; a lexicalized form from the expression [se zi]ce că – literally it said that], pasămite [‘apparently’ whose etymology is controver- sial] and chipurile [‘supposedly’; a borrowing from Hungarian, literally ‘faces’] are means of quotative/reportative evidentiality. This lexical and grammatical system marking indi- rect evidentiality will be analyzed with respect to their grammaticalization processes, but also addressing the discursive behaviour.

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